Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Digital Universe is an accurate 3D digital atlas of the Universe that maps planets, moons and stars and galaxies from the local solar neighborhood out to the edge of the observable Universe. The atlas incorporates data from dozens of organizations worldwide to create the most complete and accurate 3D atlas of the Universe.

The Digital Universe consists of the Milky Way Galaxy and that which is outside our Galaxy, the extragalactic, including a multitude of other galaxies and quasars. It lets users fly away to visit nearby stars, star clusters, nebulae, extrasolar planets, nearby galaxy clusters, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and much more. You can see the night sky as it appears across the spectrum, from radio and infrared, to visible, and even in Gamma rays.

The Digital Universe was developed by the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium with support from NASA nearly a decade ago. It is continually updated and is the primary resource for production of the Museum’s Space Shows such as the current Journey to the Stars, and is used in live, real-time renderings for Virtual Tours of the Universe, a public program held on the first Tuesday of every month. The program has been downloaded to personal computers thousands of time and has been licensed to many other planetariums and theaters world-wide.